Integrated circuit packages are produced for usage in a variety of products or for a variety of applications. For example, integrated circuit packages which are designed for use in military and avionics applications are often required to survive and/or operate under aggressive or rigorous operating conditions and environments. These integrated circuit packages (ex—hermetic packages) are often expected to have a long lifespan (i.e., remain functionally operable over a long period of time), such as for 20 years or more, and are typically very costly to produce.
Contrastingly, most currently available integrated circuit packages are designed for usage in products which present relatively benign/much less rigorous operating conditions, such as desktop PC's, electronic games and cell phones. Such integrated circuit packages are commonly referred to as Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) devices. These COTS devices tend to have a relatively short lifespan (ex—2 to 5 years) and are relatively inexpensive to produce compared to military electronics components.
In recent years the military electronics industry has sought a less expensive alternative to the high cost integrated circuit packages discussed above, which are currently implemented in environmentally severe military and avionics applications. One alternative has been to implement the currently available (and less expensive) COTS devices, in the more demanding military and avionics environments. However, when the currently available COTS devices have been subjected to these more rigorous conditions, they have been especially prone to failure due to higher operating temperatures, corrosion, or the like. Current methods of modifying or designing integrated circuit packages for improved corrosion resistance are typically very expensive and may exacerbate other failure mechanisms and thereby reduce reliability.
Thus, it would be desirable to have a method for providing near-hermetically coated integrated circuit assemblies which address the problems associated with current solutions.